Mammal Bones And Teeth From Gray's Reef & Other Places

[Bianca]

Before continuing our description of the process of excavation let us consider the conditions that existed in the world during the Ice Age. In that period tremendous quantities of water were taken out of the oceans and locked up on the land in the form of glacial ice. About one-sixth of all the lands now in existence were blanketed with ice. About one-half of North America was covered. The ice extended from Alaska to Greenland and southward to the Ohio and Missouri Rivers. South Carolina was not glaciated but it felt the effects in a somewhat cooler climate and in the fact that the sea was lowered at least 150 feet, possibly much more. This latter, as previously mentioned, greatly extended the land area to the southeast. From what is now the coast of South Carolina a broad flat extended seaward for more than 50 miles. This area lay close to sea level and parts of it doubtless were swampy traps for unwary animals, as are parts of the Coastal Plain today.

We should mention at this point there was not just one epoch of glaciation --- there were four. These cold epochs were separated by warmer inter-glacial epochs. During these times the ice melted, the glaciers retreated northward and sea level came back to normal. In South Carolina during each warm epoch the sea rose to cover the shelf that had been exposed during the preceding glacial stage. Sea animals flourished and shell beds were formed. As the glaciers re-advanced the sea retreated and the land animals that lived along the margin of the glaciers retreated southward ahead of the invading ice. They inhabited parts of the newly exposed land and left their bones to mingle with those of sea animals. These changes took place slowly, of course, and it is estimated that the entire Ice Age (not counting the present epoch, which may be just another inter-glacial stage) occupied a span of 2,000,000 years.

[Bianca]

The fact that the Edisto deposits that now are being excavated contain the remains of bison and bears --- animals that apparently did not migrate into America until the closing stages of the Ice Age --- suggests that our deposit is fairly young. It is difficult to determine the exact age because the fauna that is being washed up is considerably mixed. The waves may have access to two or more thin deposits of different ages. Some of the sharks' teeth belong to species that antedate the Ice Age but these teeth are resistant objects that may have been reworked --- mixed up with Ice Age deposits during the Ice Age. Likewise, it is known that some of the typical Ice Age mammals that are now extinct -- American horses, the Giant Sloth, Mastodon, and Woolly Mammoth --- persisted in North America until a few thousand years ago. These particular animals were still in existence following the retreat of the last glacier and some, at least, after the arrival of the earliest human beings on this continent. You may ask, is it, then, not possible that the Edisto waves may uncover human artifacts or actual skeletal remains? It is possible but very unlikely.

We shall not attempt in this brief account to describe the appearance or the habits of all of South Carolina's numerous extinct animals but Mr. Kiener has sketched some of the commoner ones, basing his sketches on well known restorations. Only bones and teeth and plates are found at Edisto and Irving Gladstein has kindly photographed a number of these. Of particular interest are the tiny milk teeth of the elephants2 --- one from the browzing mastodon, the other from the mammoth, a grazing animal. Bones of the former have been found associated with human artifacts in Florida; frozen bodies of the latter have been recovered in arctic regions. The Giant Sloth that lived in the Edisto region bore little resemblance to his modern tree-dwelling relative. The Ice Age sloth was a ground-dweller that stood erect to pull down branches with its claws. It probably lumbered awkwardly on all-fours, walking on the outer edges of its feet. Some of the horses were as large as those living today.

[Bianca]

Many believe that the fossils that are being washed up at Edisto are brought to the coast by streams, but to the writer it seems unlikely that such is the case. Nearby streams, such as South Edisto River, are sluggish and carry only fine sediment. It seems doubtful that they could bring down large heavy bones even if aided by tidal currents. Mr. Rutledge, who probably knows the area better than anyone, reported that the largest bone that he found weighed close to 40 pounds. The writer weighed the largest one now in the Edisto Museum --- a fragment of elephant bone --- and found that it weighed 20-1/4 pounds. Mr. Jaworski, who collected 967 specimens, reported that they were most abundant at high tide mark on the Edisto front beach and in the area immediately to the north east. Fossils were comparatively rare on Bay Point and on the beach fronting South Edisto River. Mr. Jaworski also pointed out that bone fragments less than 2/3 inches long were rare. In the writer's opinion, the waves at Edisto are eating into an unusually rich concentration of vertebrate remains buried just below sea level. In this connection it is interesting to note that the nearby Hunting Island beach, which, like Edisto, is receding rapidly landward, has not yielded a single fossil although it has been searched carefully.

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(1) H. G. Richards, "Fauna of the Pleistocene Pamlico Formation of the Southern Atlantic Coastal Plain." Geological Society of America Bulletin, vol. 47, pp. 1638, 1640, 1936. 


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[Bianca]

Tom Hebert
Member
Member # 999

  posted 08-09-2004 11:38 AM                       
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These were all good points Dhill and Chronos. As Smiley and I have been preaching for years, the evidence for Atlantis in the Atlantic is overwhelming.

As for the elephants, I don't think it's illogical for them to be in the Atlantic area if you take into account the size of the territory--larger that Asia and Libya combined!

A while back I posted this website showing where scientists have discovered mastodon bones in the Atlantic Ocean!



http://www.graysreef.nos.noaa.gov/information.html


Tom 



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But I couldn't find the item at the link.  So I pmailed him and he answered in less than an hour - bless him!


Here's his answer:



"Hi Bianca,

Apparently the agency reorganized their website for Gray's Reef.  Here is the new url

http://graysreef.noaa.gov/information.html

Near the bottom of the page is this statement.
Quote
Fossil bivalves and gastropods , and mastodon bones located in this area indicate that the reef was once a shallow coastal environment and an exposed land form as recently as 10,000 years BP. As a terrestrial environment there may exist at Gray's Reef extant prehistoric cultural resources.

This dovetails nicely for both Cayce and Plato, don't you think?

Tom"

[Bianca]

Significant Resources


Gray's Reef is a submerged hard bottom (limestone) area that, as compared to surrounding areas, contains extensive but discontinuous rock outcropping of moderate ( 6 to 10 feet) height with sandy, flat-bottomed troughs between. The series of rock ledges and sand expanses has produced a complex habitat of caves, burrows, troughs, and overhangs that provide a solid base for the abundant sessile invertebrates to attach and grow. This rocky platform with its carpet of attached organisms is known locally as a "live bottom habitat". This topography supports an unusual assemblage of temperate and tropical marine flora and fauna. Algae and invertebrates grow on the exposed rock surfaces: dominant invertebrates include sponges, barnacles, sea fans, hard coral, sea stars, crabs, lobsters, snails, and shrimp. The reef attracts numerous species of benthic and pelagic fish, including black sea bass, snapper, grouper, and mackerel. Since Gray's Reef lies in a transition area between temperate and tropical waters, reef fish population composition changes seasonally. Loggerhead sea turtles, a threatened species, use Gray's Reef year-round for foraging and resting and the reef is part of the only known winter calving ground for the highly endangered northern right whale.



Fossil bivalves and gastropods , and mastodon bones located in this area indicate that the reef was

once a shallow coastal environment and an exposed land form as recently as 10,000 years BP.

As a terrestrial environment there may exist at Gray's Reef extant prehistoric cultural resources.


http://graysreef.noaa.gov/information.html



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FROM:


http://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php/topic,5624.15.html

[Bianca]

dhill757

Member
Member # 1890

Member Rated:
   posted 08-11-2004 10:35 PM                       
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That's okay, Essan, I like your comments~! Good scientific work is supposed to stand up to scrutiny, no matter who is offering it, and I've your particular scutiny more enlightened than most!
The passage I'm talking about from the Collins books comes from page 58 of my copy, under the chapter "Atlanticus."

It reads like this:

"What we cany say is that various species of mammoth and mastodon inhabited the American continent prior to the cessation of the last Ice Age, c 9000-8500 b.c. Conceivably, such enormous beasts could have been construed as elephants, invoking the possibility that they might have existed on Plato's Atlantic Island. In support of this theory Atlantologists cite the fact that mammoth and mastodon bones have been trawled up from the sea bottom by vessels fishing off the Atlantic shelf, close to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Despite such inexplicable curiosities there is no hard evidence whatsoever to lend credibility to the idea of elephants in Atlantis."

Collins' footnote credits Donato, A Re-examination of the Atlantis Theory, p 46, after K.O. Emery in Oceanus magazine. Hansen, p. 399

Now, I like Andrew Collins research a lot, but some of his conclusions often are kind of weird. To disqualify the idea of hard evidence of elephants in Atlantis, I think we both agree you have to know where Atlantis was. Collins, of course, places it in Cuba, and it's to his credit that he even mentions anything supporting an Azores Atlantis at all. Most researchers, I've noticed, either try to rip apart evidence that it may have been in other places or don't even mention it at all in order to support their pet theories.

Between, the elephant bones trawled up by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (and I'm still looking for the original sources and, of course, for pictures), the fact that the O'Briens have mapped out a sunken area there roughly the size of Spain, and that bigger parts of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge were almost certainly above sea level during the Ice Age (which I'll get into later), the Azores becomes just as strong a candidate for Atlantis as it ever was, although, in my opinion it's not the only one!


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